Hinduism is the World’s oldest Religion and it’s also the
wisest, in my opinion. There is a good
reason why the word guru has entered everyday vocabulary as synonymous with someone
who knows it all. The more closely I
examine the World’s religions, the more similarities I find. The major Christian and Jewish moveable
feasts are metaphorically the same as their earlier Greek equivalents. Also, I see a lot of room for theology in the
field of quantum physics and that discipline’s quest to explain how the
universe works. When it comes to
Religion, I don’t think that people should have to choose a side and then
insist that other groups are wrong.
Being human means that it is not possible to have all of the answers. The Hindus have long recognized this and for
that I believe they are incredibly wise.
In her book, Eat, Pray,
Love, author Elizabeth Gilbert takes 1 year off from work to travel the
globe and find herself. During the middle
4 months of her twelve month sabbatical, she resides in an Indian ashram learning
how to meditate. After reading Gilbert’s
book, I studied Hinduism and found that it closely resembles the mystical
factions of all three of the major monotheistic religions, Gnosticism in
Christianity, Kabbalah in Judaism and Sufism in Islam. Knowing that Carl Jung was a devotee of
Gnosticism and the many Hollywood celebrities, like Madonna and Ashton Kuchner
practiced Kaballah, I was further intrigued.
In mystical religions, like Hinduism, it is believed that the purpose of
life is to experience God directly.
Contact with a higher power is achieved by praying or meditating. Here is what Elizabeth Gilbert wrote about
her experience finding God:
I don’t want to say that what
I experienced that Thursday afternoon in India was indescribable, even though
it was. I’ll try to explain anyway. Simply put, I got pulled through the wormhole
of the Absolute, and in that rush I suddenly understood the workings of the
universe completely. I left my body, I
left the room, I left the planet, I stepped through time and I entered the
void, all at the same time. The void was
a place of limitless peace and wisdom.
The void was conscious and it was intelligent. The void was God, which means that I was
inside God. But not in a gross, physical
way – not like I was Liz Gilbert stuck inside a chunk of God’s thigh
muscle. I just was part of God. In addition to being God. I was both a tiny piece of the universe and
exactly the same size as the universe. ¶It wasn’t hallucinogenic, what I was
feeling. It was the most basic of
events. It was heaven, yes. It was the deepest love I’d ever experienced,
beyond anything I could have previously imagined, but it wasn’t euphoric. It wasn’t exciting. There wasn’t enough ego or passion left in me
to create euphoria and excitement. It
was just obvious. Like when you’ve been
looking at an optical illusion for a long time, straining your eyes to decode
the trick, and suddenly your cognizance shifts and there – now you can clearly
see it! – the two vases are actually two faces.
And once you’ve seen it, you can never not see it again. ¶ “So this is
God,” I thought. “Congratulations to
meet you.” (199)
In Hinduism, yoga and meditation are spiritual practices like
praying or going to Church in Christianity. Gilbert details her struggles to still her
mind and uses humor to describe her frustration. Yoga may have a reputation for being a light
workout, but it requires a lot of mental effort and discipline. One must also have the willingness to
cultivate the inborn spark of the divine.
Hinduism also incorporates many of the same principles as
physics. The idea of karma is much like
Newton’s law of motion, for every action there is an equal and opposite
reaction. If you are putting forward
good acts, then you end up happy and content.
If you put forth negativity, then that is what surrounds you. Also, the Hindu conception of time and space
fits perfectly with current beliefs of physicists, for example, in Hinduism
space and time continue backwards and forwards in infinite dimensions. Another similarity between Christianity and Hinduism
is that there is a God who took on a human form in both faiths. The Baghagavad
Gita, one of Hinduism’s spiritual texts, is one long conversation between two
mortals, Krishna, God in human form and Arjuna, who represents all of humanity. At one point, Arjuna asks Krishna to show him
the true nature of God. When Krishna
complies, Arjuna immediately begs him to stop, because he can not handle the complexity
of what he sees. Krishna then promises
Arjuna that there is no reason to be afraid, as long as he believes in God.
Hindus do not believe in an eternal damnation, but there is a
concept of Hell, which is related to the idea of karma. Gilbert spends the final third of her year in
Bali, which is also a Hindu country.
There she studies under a medicine man named Ketut. In the following passage they discuss Heaven
and Hell:
But
here Ketut was talking about heaven and hell in a different way, as if they are
real places in the universe which he has actually visited. At least I think that’s what he meant.
Trying
to get clear on this, I asked, “You have been to hell, Ketut?”
He
smiled. Of course he’s been there.
“What’s
it like in hell?”
“Same
like heaven,” he said.
He
saw my confusion and tried to explain. “Universe is a circle, Liss.”
I
still wasn’t sure I understood.
He
said. “To up, to down – all same, at end.”
I
remembered an old Christian mystic notion: As
above, so below. I asked. “Then how can you tell the difference between
heaven and hell?”
“Because
of how you go. Heaven, you go up,
through seven happy places. Hell, you go
down, through seven sad places. This is
why it is better for you to go up, Liss.
He laughed.
I asked, “You mean, you might as well spend
your life going upward, through the happy places, since heaven and hell – the
destination – are the same thing anyway?”
“Same-same,”
he said. “Same in end, so better to be happy on journey.”
I
said, “So, if heaven is love, then hell is…”
“Love,
too,” he said
Some argue that Heaven
and Hell are figurative terms that refer to states of being while alive. Hindus do believe in an afterlife and there
are seven layers of heaven and seven layers of hell, much like what is
described in Dante’s Inferno. In Hinduism,
however, Hell is not permanent and there is always a chance of redemption. For me this is the most important difference
between Christianity and Hinduism, the permanence of Hell. Otherwise, both Christianity and Hinduism aim
to know God and then act according to a moral code in order to reach Heaven. As Ketut says, it’s better to know God and be
happy on the journey. As for Hell being
Love, anyone who’s lived through a toxic relationship could attest to the
validity of that statement.
